THE SNOW QUEEN
Michael Cunningham
Picador, 258 pages,
978-1250067722
* * 1/2
Is there genre for writing that's too good for the novel
that contains it? If so, The Snow Queen goes
to the front of the class. This is a beautifully composed book whose prose
soars so far above its characters one wishes Michael Cunningham had saved it
for a better book. Cunningham's literary chops are well-established due to
books such as The Hours (1998), which
won a Pulitzer Prize; and Specimen Days (2005).
Those books contained complex characters adrift in thorny situations, and were
inspired by literary giants such as Virginia Woolf and Walt Whitman. Alas, The Snow Queen is Hans Christian
Andersen as filtered through Woody Allen's obsession with love, sex, and death,
and Bret Easton Ellis' portraits of bourgeois bohos behaving badly. Cunningham gives
just enough to inspire is to plow through this book and admire its gem-like
sentences, but it's a toss up as to whether these justify what is, at the end
of the day, a pretty lame narrative.
Those who recall Andersen's Snow Queen will recall that she rules over snowflakes that look and
act like bees. Her kisses pack sting as well–the first warms, the second brings
forgetfulness, and the third kills. Cunningham's book is set in 21st
century Bushwick, a section of Brooklyn in the midst of uneasy and incomplete
gentrification–a warren in which one can find backbiting hipsters and
blood-soaked hooligans. Tyler Meeks is a 43-year-old failed musician still
dreaming of a hit in his idle moments he's not wallowing in self-pity. He
shares an apartment with two seeming soul mates: his wife, Beth, who is
mortally ill with cancer; and his chubby gay brother Barrett who, at age 38,
struggles with his own string of failures–one failed love affair after another.
Toss in 56-year-old Liz, the owner of the chic secondhand shop at which all
four occasionally work, and you've got a collection of people whom one holds in
both pity and loathing. It would easier to feel sympathy if Tyler weren't a
coke fiend, Beth a passive dishrag, and Liz an amoral cougar. Barrett is the
linchpin. During a stroll through wintry Central Park that was intended to jolt
him out of despair, he sees an eerie blue light in the sky that he perceives as
sentient. Has he just had a religious experience? Beth's seeming miracle recovery
suggests this, but is Barrett cut out for the life of mystic? The book's action
toggles between 2004 and 2008 as characters seek to address anxieties ranging
from trivial—Tyler's inability to write a tribute song for Beth–to more
substantial, such as Beth grappling with whether she's more comfortable in
near-death or sleeping walking through life.
There are several intriguing twists in the narrative, but I
was left with three feelings, that left me underwhelmed by The Snow Queen. The first is that it's hard to imagine Barrett as a
holy man of any more substance than a doe-eyed sophomore dabbling in crystals;
the second that Beth is passively uninteresting, Tyler a jerk, and Liz a
joyless opportunist. Mainly, though, the book feels more like we are reading
about Cunningham writing about writing about his characters rather than giving
life to them. At best I give The Snow
Queen a tepid endorsement. On the plus side, at just 258 pages Cunningham
gives us a book in which we don't invest a lot of time if we reach the end and
feel unfulfilled. I can also imagine it would be a good read for a book group.
If nothing else, Cunningham leaves his title tantalizingly ambiguous. Who is
the titular snow queen: pallid Beth, icy Liz, or cocaine? Or is she a metaphor
for metro New York's seduction and dangers? If that sounds like enough, by all
means read this novel. Just don't expect Woolf or Whitman.
Rob Weir
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